big news from the courts today. whitey bulger has been found guilty. he now faces life behind bars. i'm krystal ball. crime fighting tool or criminal act? a monumental ruling about new york's controversial stop and frisk policy, a federal court throws it out while mayor bloomberg throws his political weight behind it. the nation's top attorney is delivering his own verdict. the war on drugs is a failure. >> and i'm abby huntsman. all of that plus an unsolved mystery solved, sort of. that missing southern california teen has finally been found, but the search for answers is far from over. we're on the trail right now in "the cycle." we start with a guilty verdict against james whitey bulger, the boston southy turned crime boss turned fbi informant turned man on the run as one of america's most wanted.

nbc's kristen dahlgren is outside the federal courthouse in boston. kristen, this was a 32-count indictment. break down the findings for us. some of the murders he was found guilty of, some of them he was not. >> reporter: yeah, these -- they all fell sort of under this racketeering charge, which is a catch all. there were 19 murders. he was found guilty of committing or being co-conspirator in 11 of them. this all during the time when he was reported to be an fbi informant. we're now hearing outside of the courthouse from some of the victims' families. we heard from pat donahue. her husband michael was one of the murders that was proven in this case. she says today she really feels like she got justice. we also heard from steven davis. he's been very vocal through all of this. his sister debra was murdered, but that was the one charge that was found no finding. so it wasn't proven or not proven. the jury just couldn't reach a

finding on that. so he was understandably disappointed. he said, though, you really can't find closure in a case like this. there's no way to bring them back. and he also pointed out that he thinks that whitey bulger now is more upset about being called a rat. he says he thinks that right now is killing him. so the families outside speaking now. we then expect to hear from the defense and then the u.s. attorney going to address the media in this case. the judge has set november 13th as the start of sentencing. though, it's likely whitey bulger will be in prison for the rest of his life. remember, he's 83 years old. he was on the run for 19 years. disappeared just as an indictment was going to be handed down in 1994. he was found in 2011 in santa monica. if this case sounds familiar to a lot of people, it may be because he is the character that jack niolson's character in "the departed" was based on. sort of that south boston mob gang ties we saw in that movie

based on whitey bulger's life and experiences here. again, he was found guilty here today. likely faces the rest of his life in prison. >> thank you, nbc's kristen dahlgren. great to see you. fantastic movie, but whitey bulger had boston in fear for many decades. so what took the jury so long, and what was the role of the controversial ci? back with us, peter lance, author of "deal with the devil: the fbi's secret 30-year relationship with a mafia killer." peter, first to you, whitey really wanted the world to know that he was not a snitch, he was not an informant, and he didn't kill women. what did you learn listening to the stories about whitey through this trial that either unnerved you or surprised you? >> well, one of the things that

was astonishing was that in the opening remarks of his defense lawyer, he said the worst thing an irish-american can be accused of is being an informant, you know, from the troubles in ireland, the ira, et cetera over the years. as an irish-american, i can assure you the worst thing an irish-american can be accused of is being a homicidal killer. so the fact that he seemed to be more worried about the rat title, that he was a rat, and more worried about that than his culpability as a mass murderer was, to me, one of the great ta takeaways from this trial. >> alan, we're talking about this man who was on the most wanted list. he was on the run for more than 16 years. we're also hearing family members of the victims, they do believe that justice has been served. were you surprised at all by the verdict? do you feel like justice has been served? >> i think that the jury was very careful. they spent five days. last week they asked the judge

for particular instructions. they asked for instruction of whether they have to be unanimous as to the racketeering acts, the individual acts. now we know from the verdict that, in fact, they were. eight of the murders the jury found not proven. that's not guilty. it means not proven. another 11 they found absolutely proven beyond a reasonable doubt. so you have a jury who over the period of four or five days carefully sifted the evidence, asked the judge for detailed instructions on this kind of -- on liability and particularly what they needed to find. i think as you go through the verdict sheet and go through the verdict, you will find that they probably looked to see where an individual witness may have been the only evidence or where that witness was corroborated by a second witness or a third witness or other corroborating evidence. so it looks to me like they did

a very careful analysis of the evidence. >> and peter, as you were mentioning, whitey bulger was an fbi informant. you pointed out to us last week that "usa today" had obtained a report from the fbi showing that there were 15,000 of these confidential informants on the books. in a single year, they committed 5,658 crimes. talk a little bit more about that program. what sort of crimes are we talking about these informants committing? is it worth what information we're getting from them? >> well, you know, again, as i said the other day, it's secret. that's the biggest problem. people should know that -- by the way, alan is kind of a hero. in what i consider to be -- dick layer said whitey was the worst informant scandal in fbi history. i beg to differ. the worst scandal was the

gregory scarpa scandal. he stopped counting after 50 murders. every fbi director from hoover to freeh got his fbi memos. the last contacting agent, on his watch, 26 murders were committed. so that is a much more monumental scandal. what makes it really significant is that the justice department, while supporting the bulger prosecution and the prosecution of his contacting agent, john conley, who's doing life, went out of their way to protect lynn diveccio. if it hadn't been for alan and his partner, no one would have known about the scarpa scandal. they actually uncovered it, i think, in 1994. it would have either festered for years or been entirely secret had it not been for the work of defense attorneys like them. >> and alan, let's talk a little bit more about what we know about today's big news here, this guilty verdict. 32 counts. the jury was deliberating for over 32 hours.

roughly a count an hour, although it doesn't always work out that way. walk us through what a jury does in that scenario. what is racketeering, which was is crucial to this case? >> racketeering is a statute enacted in the 1970s. it stands for rico. it was designed to address, quite frankly, organized crime. so what it says is if there's something called an enterprise and members of that enterprise commit two or more racketeering acts -- and racketeering acts are defined as criminal acts, a specific type of criminal act. that includes murders, extortion, many, many different kinds of offenses. if members of that enterprise commit two or more of those acts within a given time period, then they can be convicted of racketeering. so it is a broad statute. it has been used very

effectively by the government over the last 20 years. and was so again today. >> all right, alan. stay there for one second. we have whitey's attorneys speaking right now in front of the courthouse. >> -- the corrupt, obscene deals made with certain witnesses should be something that informs all the citizens about what happens behind the scenes in a federal prosecution. >> -- what do you conclude from that? if bulger didn't kill debra davis or there's no finding in that regard, what do you think happened? >> hank? >> jay carney and i were very pleased at the diligence of the jury, how they paid such attention throughout the trial, even some of the parts of the trial that were difficult and sometimes even boring. the amount of time they spent reflecting in deliberation shows that this jury was the best

group of people to ultimately make the decision regarding the verdict. the government pinned their hopes on these predicate offenses, in many cases upon witnesses who we thought had an absolute lack of credibility, an extraordinary motive to lie, and were not guides that a reasonable person could follow to help find a conviction. to ask a public or a jury to trust in whole witnesses that had such promises and inducements and such motive to lie, in some ways that's reflected itself in the verdict. >> [ inaudible ]. >> i'm pleased to be a criminal defense lawyer, and i'm proud of what hank brennan and i did in this trial.

what criminal defense lawyers do every single day in this court and in the state courts, we defend people against criminal charges, and we do the best we can. there are a lot of sacrifices made by the trial team, a lot of sacrifices made by hank's family and my family that allowed us to represent james bulger in this trial. but for us, we feel that when we were appointed to this case that we would do the best possible job we did and the best possible job we could and we feel that we did so. we hope we made our fellow criminal defense lawyers proud. because they would have done the same -- >> we were listening in there to whitey bulger's defense team answering questions outside of the courthouse. whitey bulger found guilty. alan, i was hoping you could pick up on that point, actually, that his attorney was making.

how good a job did the defense do in this case? there was a very strange scenario when they were making their closing arguments where they essentially admitted that whitey bulger was guilty of many of these crimes, but he did so with the consent of the fbi. so how good of a job did the defense do in this almost impossible case? >> i think having been in that situation on a number of occasions and having tried similar kinds of cases, at least cases where you have witnesses with extraordinary inducements to testify, i think they did the best possible job. one of the difficulties they had was mr. bulger apparently did not want them to admit or go into what he was doing for the fbi, the fact he was a confidential informant for the fbi. so they were basically faced with the task -- and i think what they did, they did very well.

essentially what they tried to do is the traditional defense, which is the witnesses have an overwhelming incentive to lie. doors are going to be opened for them. they've committed all kinds of crimes. they're unbelievable and you can't believe them, and they've tried to couple that traditional defense with these unusual circumstances of fbi misconduct to basically say that if you couple that with the fbi misconduct that's occurred in this case and about that case over decades, you have an untrustworthy prosecution. you have untrustworthy agents bringing this prosecution. that's what they tried to do. i think they did it as effectively as anyone could. >> all right, peter and alan, thank you very much. up next, from crime to justice, attorney general eric holder making news this afternoon. the breaking news continues on "the cycle." [ male announcer ] america's favorite endless shrimp is back!

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we are back now with more breaking news. attorney general eric holder this afternoon laid out a dramatic shift in how the justice department will prosecute nonviolent drug offenders. according to the plan, low-level offenders who have no ties to larger organizations or gangs will no longer face massive mandatory prison sentences. >> some of the enforcement priorities that we have set have had a destabilizing effect on particular communities, largely poor and of color. applied inappropriately, they are ultimately counterproductive. this is why i have today mandated a modification of the justice department's charging policy so that certain

low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences. >> he is also unveiling a new set of guidelines that will delegate more cases to state and local prosecution ensuring that fewer smaller crimes are subject to federal charges. holder's changes come on the heel of a major decision here today in new york city where a federal judge has thrown out stop and frisk, the controversial tactic of stopping and searching people on the street for guns or drugs. they said that the tactic violates people's constitutional rights. this afternoon mayor michael bloomberg, a strong supporter of stop and frisk, defended the policy with the police commissioner by his side. >> it has taken some 8,000 guns off the streets over the past decade and some 80,000 other weapons. the fact that fewer guns are son the street now shows that our efforts have been successful,

and there is just no question that stop and frisk has saved countless lives. >> let's bring in the only guy we know who can do all this news justice. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. and pete, i want to start with eric holder here and the changes that he's proposing. please give us the details of what he's advocating for in these changes. >> well, i think it's partly a reflection of the fact that the federal government, like the rest of the country, is facing a budget crisis here. they're trying to focus their efforts, he says, on the most serious crimes and the most dangerous offenders. he wants to tell federal prosecutors -- in fact, he sent a memo out today instructing them that when it comes to these lower-level offenders in drug cases -- now, he listed several of the factors there. no connection to organized crime, no extensive criminal history, low-level offenders, a couple others in the memo. there can't have been a gun in connection with their offense, and they can't have sold to children.

if they meet all those criteria, what he tells the prosecutor is, when you write up the charges, don't write up the charge in a way that it would invoke a mandatory minimum. don't put in an amount of drugs involved, for example, that would trigger the mandatory minimum. so it's going to change the way prosecutors handle these lower-level offenses. now, it's hard to say exactly how many prisoners that are until the federal prison system now are in for low-level offenses. it does seem to be a fairly significant number. he notes the u.s. federal prisons are at 140% of their capacity. if you look at the prison system overall, the u.s. sort of leads the world in incarceration. so this undoubtedly will have some effect on the size of the prison population. >> yeah, and we know that prison population right now is about 219,000, according to bureau justice statistics. a lot of them related to drug offense ps. what i wanted to get your thoughts on, as i spoke to some doj officials today who said, look, they're not alone on this.

they have support on this idea on record from these prominent republicans. there's room for congress to move. what do you make of that argument from the justice department? >> the republicans they're talking about are rand paul and mike lee, the senators from kentucky and utah. congress is probably shifting on this a little. they look eed at this a decade so ago. crime is down. there's a lot less concern from the american public about drugs. perhaps the time is right. what the attorney general has done today is an executive action that doesn't need congressional approval. the larger question, though, of mandatory minimums would need congressional approval. >> all right. pete williams, thank you very much for that. of course, guys, pete williams is always right when he's saying this is partly a budgetary issue. we have prisons overpopulated in many or most of our states. but in his speech, eric holder is clearly making this a moral issue. this is not just a budgetary

issue. we have seen the obama administration now work to be lessen the crack to coke sentencing disparity. now this sort of criminal justice reform. don't let it be said that the obama administration never did anything for black people. black people who are suffering under criminal justice inequalities are going to find a disparate amount of relief after disparate impact from these polici policies. when we're talking about stop and frisk and this disparity, the thing we can link them together is criminology. they talk about why people break the law partly has to do with legitimacy. do they feel the law doesn't legitimately take care of them, work for them? do the people who enact the law, who carry out the law, are they illegitimate for them? >> such an important point that

goes to what krystal was reporting here. you have this huge ruling today where a federal court is saying that the racial profiling in stop and frisk is unconstitutional in two ways. number one, it violates the fourth amendment protections that we have generally, the right to avoid an unreasonable search. in this case, the searches that we've been seeing in new york are on the street. they're humiliating, in the words of the judge. they're happening all over the place. 500,000 plus last year. majority against minorities. a second reason why it's unconstitutional beyond simply the search rules, which is they've been done in a manner that is racially unfair and racially selective. if you take away one thing from today's ruling, it's the undeniable fact that even though 85% of the people stopped are minorities, 89% are innocent of anything. they don't get a summons let alone an arrest for a crime. and oddly, weirdly,

shockingly -- >> uh-oh. >> -- the people who are stopped who have the most weapons, which is the reason they're being stopped, are white people in new york. >> no. >> not the african-american population that is so selectively targeted. so i think we have -- and the reason why i'm excited about this is i agree with george w. bush, who disagreed with racial profiling. most people have. what we have is a policy that's been sold as something else. today you have a federal court stepping in saying, no, mayor bloomberg, stop discriminating on the basis of race. that's what this program is. >> on the politics of this, the other thing pete pointed out is mayor bloomberg is really behind the times with this law and order, anything to lower crime. there is no proof that stop and frisk does lower crime. that's another matter. going back to holder, pete is absolutely right that the politics of this have shifted. not just rand paul and mike lee, the libertarians. you're also seeing a lot of republican governors across the country.

governors like rick perry. ken cuccinelli said if you really believe no one is beyond redemption, then we need to stop throwing away that key. toure, to your point on the changes that have already been made in the crack and coke sentencing disparity, that has already saved us $.5 billion, 16 years in prison, and not to mention the moral failings that previously were there in that sentencing disparity. there still is a sentencing disparity, i should point out. >> not even mentioning the cost of all of this, which we're spending more than $40 billion a year. the more facts that we get on this, you have even republicans saying this doesn't make a lot of sense. but going back to stop and frisk, because there are two components. you have the mayor and the nypd commissioner saying, look, we have our facts to suggest that over the last 11 years, we have

nearly 8,000 fewer deaths because of this. the problem is, they're going to have to make the correlation. you often say this, toure. stop and frisk is down, crime is down. so how do you make the correlation that it is simply because of stop and frisk that crime is down? i think they're going to have an uphill battle. i also want to point out that, you know, this next chapter appears like it could be vague. what does this mean? you can still stop someone on the vestreet. i think that's when it might become problematic. we can continue this debate, obviously. >> well, it's been problematic all along. >> very encouraging shifts today. up next, the kidnapping case of hannah anderson. find out what the teen's grandmother is saying today about all it all ended. that's next as "the cycle" rolls on. where is flo? anybody know where flo is? are you flo? yes. is this the thing you gave my husband? well, yeah, yes. the "name your price" tool. you tell us the price you want to pay, and we give you a range of options to choose from. careful, though -- that kind of power can go to your head.

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hannah anderson is back with

her family this afternoon after she went missing for more than a week. the 16-year-old was rescued by the fbi on saturday thanks in large part to four observant horseback riders in idaho. they suspected that something just wasn't right and they were right. the two were found deep in the mountainous terrain. it took fbi investigators more than 2 1/2 hours to hike there. while we're not clear on what transpired, we know hannah's alleged abductor was shot and killed. today her grandmother described a long road ahead. >> i'm excited for my son who gets to have her at least. he lost his life and my beautiful, handsome grandson. we just got to work at getting closure from now on. >> nbc's luke russert is in san diego this afternoon. >> reporter: yeah, guys. fascinating developments today. the sheriff here in san diego county, bill gore, in an

interview with a local affiliate said hannah anderson was held under duress and was unaware that her mother and brother were killed in that fire set by mr. dimaggio. her father is going to have a press conference around 2:30 pacific time. this has really become a story about a survivor. that's what hannah anderson will become. she's going to sort of join this club of elizabeth smart and these folks who have a traumatic experience to them and grow up in the public spotlight. the family has been preparing for that. they said they were ecstatic to have hannah found alive, but they knew that with her mother dead and her brother dead that she was coming back to a very difficult environment. they have totally cleaned out her mother's apartment. they never want her to go back there. they want her to start her life anew within her community, within her hometown and try to have as normal a life moving forward as possible. obviously, with the media spotlight and the horrific things that have happened to her within a week, that's going to be difficult.

think about it. she's been kidnapped, driven up through to idaho, witnessed a fire fight presumably between dimaggi and the fbi and found out her mother and brother were killed. it's a fascinating set of developments. this is definitely now a story of survival. back to you in new york. >> all right. thanks, luke. let's now bring in psychiatrist and medical director for the county of l.a.'s department of children and family services, dr. charles sophie. thank you so much for joining us. let's talk about this long road ahead for hannah and her family. as someone that grew up as pretty much neighbors with elizabeth smart, i saw first hand how difficult it was to come back and yet she was, you know, surrounded by such a strong community, a strong support of her family. hannah, it's not the same story. i mean, she's lost members of her family. what does this next chapter look like for her and her family? how do you even begin to move forward from here? >> i think the best first step for her is to be able to grieve and realize all that has happened to her. not to necessarily feel through

it, but to think through it and be able to go through the motions to grieve and then begin the process of healing through good treatment. >> well, doctor, authorities said that dimaggio was infatu e infatuated with hannah. talk about his mindset and his ultimate plan with her. >> infatuated could mean anything. he could have been dilutional or pretty much in his right mind but maybe been a perpetrator or predator, maybe abused and victimized as a child himself. really, crossing boundaries, giving red flags off, and making this young woman very uncomfortable many times but not really controlling himself. so he really was not in his right mind and acting in a safe manner. but he was definitely perpetrating her, and the sexual and emotional abuse she went through may not have been actual physical or sexual abuse, but in her mind it was emotional abuse that really twisted her and confused her. she seems to be strong.

i think that strength is what will dictate her outcome and her resiliency. >> doctor, how typical are these kind of cases? >> well, i think unfortunately they happen a lot more than we're aware of. i think as her grandmother, this young woman's grandmother said several times, there are a lot of red flags in a lot of families that people just down play or they have that gut feeling but they really just don't act on it because they don't want to think that. it's uncomfortable to think that about either a family friend or an acquaintance. >> all right, dr. charles sophie, thank you very much. seems like we're all about verdicts today. up next, the verdict on romney's fail presidential run. in his own words, it's mitt according to mitt. [ male announcer ] what's important to you?

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upon which this nation was founded are the only sure guide to a resurgent economy and to a new greatness. like so many of you, paula and i have left everything on the field. we have given our all to this campaign. >> amen. we all know how that ended. barack obama defeated mitt romney by 126 electoral votes, but there is a lot about the campaign that you may not know and that could still have 2016 implications. our next guest actually had a backstage seat for the 2012 campaign. he found secret meetings among gop bosses pining for that christie candidacy, breakthroughs below the radar for the obama campaign's unusual door knocking operation, and all those unique problems that dogged a candidate who looked so good on paper, mitt romney. joining us now is a man who's covered nine presidential campaigns for "the washington post" with stints as political editor and now chief correspondent. he's the author of "collision 2012: obama versus romney and

the future of elections in america." honor to have you here, dan. >> great to be here. >> let me start with something you talk about early on. you say, hey, the obama campaign did something really different. we hear a lot about these political celebrities, the ad men, et cetera. you say the soul of the campaign was this vaunted field operation, the door knockers. and that obama, especially in the re-election, managed to fuse them with the internet in a new way. what happened there? >> well, the soul of the campaign is the ground operation because obama had always said i want this to be a grassroots operation. what they did was took what they had done in 2008, which seemed pretty significant and mold breaking, and just went beyond it by a significant margin. their ability to marry up new technology, to take advantage of social media, to develop new software tools, all of which were designed to make them more efficient on the street so that it was this combination of very

high-tech work that they had done to know more about the voters than any previous campaign and then to arm the volunteers on the street with that information so that, for example, they could go on one street and instead of knocking on 15 doors, they would knock on two or three doors because they knew those were the two or three that they could get a vote from. >> dan, having spent a day or two on the campaign trail with my dad, just from my perspective, it seemed like one of the biggest problems for romney was not being able to define his own narrative. president obama made the choice early on was not simply going to win the election on the economy. so what do you do? you define then romney as this 1% versus the 99%, this guy that doesn't understand you. he's the guy that's going to fire your uncle. he doesn't understand your needs. you even saw, you know, folks like santorum on the right that used that same sort of narrative against him in the primary. so how much was this part of the problem, the fact that he wasn't able to get ahead of himself and

define his own narrative before it was defined for him? >> you know, it's a great question because we often talk about the ability or lack of ability of a candidate to connect with voters. as i've watched this campaign and thought it afterwards, i looked at romney and it was the opposite. it was that voters could not connect with him and in part because it was of the life that he had. they felt he came from a different place. he had different life experiences. they couldn't exactly reach out and touch him. there was a focus group that it the romney campaign did at one point. one of the participants in it said -- and it seemed to me that it crystallized the problem. this person said, he's been too rich for too long. he was never able to quite overcome that. the way he spoke to voters, he spoke about the economy from the perspective of job creators but he had difficulty connecting with the workers who worked in those firms. >> dan, when "us" magazine puts you and ari side by side for who wore it better, i think you will

win. everybody at home can see that. >> he's got more experience. >> i want to talk about the future. you dig a lot into chris christie in this 2016 campaign. what did you learn about chris christie that will help us looking forward to 2016? >> well, i think the thing that everybody recognizes is that chris christie is a real person. he's blunt and he's tough and he doesn't mind a good fight. and he's been very effective in new jersey. he also has this kind of capacity to stand back and look at himself with a little bit of wonder. he told me about being on marine one, the president's helicopter during hurricane sandy. it was like he was sort of saying, geez, i'm just this kid from jersey, and here i am on the president's helicopter. there's a little bit of that in him. i think we know he has a healthy ego, as most politicians who have the presidency in the back of their mind, if not the front. i think the question for chris christie is can he export what's been a very successful tenure in new jersey in terms of the way

he's able to reach both republicans and democrats and carry that nationally and can he convince the republican base that he's the best candidate they could put up in 2016 should he decide to run in order to win some of the blue states that they're going to have to take back. >> he seemed quite willing to tell you just how sought after he was in 2012. i'm going to talk a little bit about one of the other candidates, rick perry. when he first got into the race, i thought he was going to be the nominee. he had everything romney didn't have. he had the swagger and the red stated governor who definitely didn't have the health care problem romney had. then he got into the race and this happened. >> the third agency of government, i would do away with the education, the -- uh -- commerce, and let's see -- i can't -- the third one i can't. sorry. oops. >> what happened to rick perry? >> well, he was ill prepared, and he acknowledged when i talked to him after the campaign

that he should never have gotten in as late as he did, that he was not ready to run. but it was a reminder, i think, not just the problems that somebody like perry has. there's so many politicians who look good on paper. running for president is quite different than anything they've ever done. it's a different animal they're contending with. rick perry found he wasn't up to the job. he had a great line long after he'd been out of the race. he spoke to the annual gridiron dinner here in washington. he said, i ran against the weakest field the republicans had ever put up and they kicked my behind. >> that's amazing. >> i mean, he was humbled by that experience. but i talked to him about a month ago. he's still looking at running again. so we may see him back on the trail in 2016. >> i will say, not all the candidates were weak. i'm going to stand by my dad here. >> that's right. he was excellent. >> dan, it's interesting. you see these big-time figures at the state level sometimes and they jump in the race late because they've done everything really effectively throughout

their careers like fred thompson or wesley clark. the book is "collision 2012." i don't know if you can confirm this, i've heard it's available on amazon.com. >> i've heard that too. >> dan, thank you very much for your time. up next, "money" magazine reveals the best place to live in america. lots of green space, great schools, a close-knit community. where is it? we'll tell you up next. with angie's list, i save time, money, and i avoid frustration. you'll find reviews on home repair to healthcare, written by people just like you. find out why more than two million members count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. the beach on your tv is much closer than it appears. dive into labor day with up to 50% off hotels at travelocity.

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do you like where you live? if you do, that is great. i'm sure it's lovely. but if you don't, our next guest has compiled a list of the top ten american small towns to live in. coming in ranked number one, sharon, massachusetts. woo-hoo! okay, i've never heard of it. here to tell us why i should know sharon as well as a bunch more towns like them is donna rosado. she's a senior writer for "money" magazine and the mind behind their cover sorry. great to have you here. >> thank you. >> so tell us who made this list. >> "money" magazine has been doing a best places to live list for over 25 years. this year we looked at small towns, population 10,000 to 50,000. we look for good, quality schools, affordability, low taxes and job growth as well as

quality of life factors. what i think you'll see through all the towns is real economic vitality. the economy is a big concern to people. that's important to a great place to live. >> vienna was a place i lived in growing up and never thought it would make a list like this. sometimes it's not exactly on the surface. >> that's right. the numbers really tell the story. you may not realize what quality of schools are if you don't have kids in the school system. one of the nice things about eenna, it has a historic downtown, the rail trail. it's a very pretty town. a lot of the northern virginia suburbs can be cookie cutter. it's got a little bit more charm in it. >> you have to sort of live in these towns to experience it. i grew up near sharon. i've been to sharon. i didn't think it was particularly memorable. no disrespect to anyone who lives there. if you live there and you see some of the things you're talking about, low property taxes, good schools, and when you talk about 40% of the town is open space and they have a wildlife sanctuary and have done

a good job of integrating nature into the urban environment, that is important to making urbanites happy. >> 40% of your town is open space. you don't see big box stores there. it has a nice charming center. they worked hard to preserve that. the other thing that's notable about sharon is the diversity of the town. it's got the largest mosque in new england. it's got this large russian population. it has nine churches, number of synagogues. religiously it's very diverse. there's 18% of public school children speak a second language at home other than english. that isn't necessarily superapparent but it's a standout for sharon. >> donna, how did you come down to the finalists on this list? did you all visit the towns? did you get a sense of how the people lived there? how did you come up with it? >> we spent months and months crunching the numbers. once we gets to a good list of

the top places we send reporters out to dozens of places and look for the elusive part of what makes a town special. talking to residents. what do they like? what don't they like. and is there a sense of community spirit? a place can be a great place to live but there's no sense of i know my neighbors. this is a great place or gatherings spots. we visit a lot of places and have a lot of discussions before we name the top ten. >> no new york city? >> we did best big city neighborhoods. brooklyn came up for that. new york is too expensive. >> donna, it's great having you. thanks so much for joining us. up next, toure's take on the holders news this hour. you also weigh inside about the attorney general's new policy for prosecuting drug crimes. like us on facebook to have your say and listen up to see if you liking what toure has to say next. it's up to you. [ female announcer ] birdhouse plans. nacho pans.

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>> this is why i have today mandated a modification of the justice department's charging policy so that certain low level nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large scale organizations, gangs or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences. >> so we have a new federal policy toward nonviolent drug offenders to lock them up less often and for less time as well as perhaps a new direction on stop and frisk. two significant changes to tactics in the war on drugs

which as holder said today, we cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming safer because "our criminal justice system may exacerbate crime rather than an leavate it." the reason why tough on crime is not smart, why it's good politics and bad crime policy is that prison is better at creating criminals than it is at deterring them. prison is criminalogenic. when we put nonviolent offenders especially users in prison, we're ignoring the fact that putting people in prison been probably make them worse. you may say, i don't commit crime because i'm scared of going to jail and i feel the same way, but most criminologists agree people with job opportunities tend to not commit violent crime. those who go to prison are far more likely to break the law again which is why 40% of former federal prisoners and 60% of

state prisoners are rearrested or sent back within three years. these massive recidivism rates suggest prison is failing in helping to create crime. how? there are a myriad of ways. spending time in prison diminishes legitimate employment opportunities. when you get out, it's hard to find work. it also diminishes your self-worth especially for those brutalized and or raped in prison. it strengthens your bonds with deviant people and weakens bonds with the law abiding community. it stigmatizes people as he deviant and there's this. as the prison population has exploded over the past three decades and millions have spent a portion of their lives in prison, the prison experience has become demystified. millions of people know intimately what prison is like and know it's survivable. the fear of the unknown is gone. people struggling to get a job and have criminals in their social network are aware that they can deal with doing a bid.

and perhaps they have to do a bid in order to be respected by some of the people in that network. and the impact extends beyond those specifically incarcerated. when we pull men away from their families for doing drugs it, makes it harder for their family to survive clickly and increases the potential for the man or woman's children to become criminals themselves. if inmates demystify the prison experience and earn money that helps draw others into criminal behavior. mass incarceration has done more harm than good. prison itself is part of the problem. finding alternatives to prison is critical because being the world leader in incarcerating citizens is an embarrassment. and economically unsustainable and not helping us fight crime. we've taken two strong steps toward turning away from tough on crime to smart on crime, two steps taken hopefully there's more to come. that does it for us. no